Disney acquires Marvel Comics (and what it means for the game industry) @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on August 31, 2009

News: The House of Mouse now owns Xavier's Mansion (and every other Marvel character).

One of the world's biggest movie/television/entertainment studios has just purchased one of the world's largest comic book publishers for a cool $4 billion in a stock and cash transaction. As DC Comics was purchased by Warner Bros. way back in 1969, Marvel Comics is now a wholly owned subsidary of Disney.

"This transaction combines Marvel's strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney's creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories," said Robert A. Iger, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company. "Ike Perlmutter and his team have done an impressive job of nurturing these properties and have created significant value. We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney."

"Disney is the perfect home for Marvel's fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses," said Ike Perlmutter, Marvel's Chief Executive Officer. "This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney's tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world."

With this deal, Disney is now the proud owner of Marvel's entire character roster, which numbers more than 5,000 (although less than 200 have made any kind of leap into television or the movies). Because of this acquisition, it's likely that all future movies from Marvel Studios will be distributed by one of Disney's many distribution companies. This move will also impact the video game world in two very profound ways.

First, the Kingdom Hearts series just got the potential to become a lot more interesting. While it's too late to effect the September release of the first DS game in the series, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, rumors of Kingdom Hearts 3 abound and the idea of seeing a three-way battle royale between Mickey Mouse, Wolverine and Cloud is almost too much to pass up. To all Disney/Marvel executives, I'm begging you, make this happen.

Secondly, this likely spells the end of the licensing deals between Marvel and various game publishers (chief among them Activision and Sega). With Disney's own Disney Interactive label jumping headfirst into game production, there is little need to contract out any future Marvel games to a third party company. However, Activision's deal with Marvel runs through 2017 and Sega's deal for the video game rights to The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America and Thor was said to be a "multi-year" deal when it was announced in 2007. So it's unlikely this will change the status quo of Marvel video games for the forseeable future.

We'll have more soon.